


straw dolls and scarecrows

by KatRoma



Series: of pinwheels and paper daffodils [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Female Uchiha Sasuke, Gen, POV Hatake Kakashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatRoma/pseuds/KatRoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something about the Uchiha family destined to break Kakashi's heart. Sasuke's next in line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	straw dolls and scarecrows

**Author's Note:**

> Hints of Kakashi/Rin because why not make it more depressing than I have to?

As much as Kakashi dislikes children, he holds a clear memory of Uchiha Itachi frowning at full force, explaining that his parents were hindering his little sister’s growth by comparing them. She simply learned differently, he’d said, and they hadn’t taken the time to accept that. It was rare he ever spoke about his family, but something in particular he didn’t elaborate on had annoyed him that day. Kakashi remembers being surprised, but amused, because there was nothing quite like brotherly protection to break a normally emotionless exterior.

He hadn’t been surprised, though, when after the massacre a year later, the Hokage released the news that Itachi had kidnapped his sister rather than killed her.

It’s that, and his eyes, that causes Kakashi to break his usual hesitancy with children below average graduation age and become one of the jounin to regularly check up on Sasuke after her return. He hadn’t been around Itachi during his final month in Konoha when his behavior began to grow erratic, and several of his teammates submitted ignored, official requests for a psych evaluation. For Kakashi, his memory of Itachi is solidly a kid who fretted over his sister, and had to make an active effort to hide an annoyance at the puns people made on his name. If he’d been hateful, his eyes don’t show it. Sasuke might be cold for a girl her age, but she’s not malicious, and the fact that this is the first time she can see without the Sharingan in over two years means she looks at everything with a sort of wonder normally found on children much younger than she is.

Really, it’s a little endearing, if Kakashi’s honest with himself.

She’s been out of observation, which went on for a longer time than he’d liked, for a couple weeks now, and this is his third time helping her train. She’s better than any ten-year-old in Konoha, he knows that just from watching her, but she’s having trouble compensating for her sight. “It’s the sunlight,” she says, pressing her palms to her eyes, and dropping her shuriken into the grass. They’re in training ground three, deserted this time of day, and there’s not a cloud in the sky. “The Sharingan filters everything, so it didn’t bother me, but now it’s just giving me a headache.”

When Obito gave Kakashi his Sharingan, he had to deal with the opposite issue. Even so, coping with a sudden handicap is something he understands. “You’ll get used to it soon,” he says, leaning back against one of the stumps. “If you can learn how to travel blind, you can learn this.”

“The Sharingan spend up that process,” she says. A breeze sweeps by, fluttering their hair. “Sight’s supposed to be an advantage, and I’m just as useless now as I was then.”

Sasuke, he’s learned, doesn’t speak like a normal kid. Neither did Itachi at this age, but she has an Ame accent wrapped around her voice that makes it stand out. “Do you want to go back home?” he asks. “Try again next time?”

She takes her hands away from her face, and blinks slowly. “I’m a kunoichi,” she says in a tone that means she’s said it many times before. “I can handle more than a headache. Besides, when’s the next time you’re available?”

Considering how often he’s sent out on missions, that’s not something he can comfortably answer. She reaches down and picks the shuriken, breath shuttering. There’s no emblem on her back, and he hadn’t worn his at her age, either.

“You said you’re better at aiming toward a chakra signature, right?” he says. “I can catch anything before it hits.”

Though she seems doubtful, there’s nothing dangerous about asking a gennin for this sort of training exercise. Even with her Sharingan, she can’t be too far beyond the level of someone fresh out of the Academy, because two and a half years isn’t enough time to work past a disability like total blindness. Or at least, that’s what he assumes.

The shuriken flies towards him with the speed of a chuunin, in the same precision and style as Itachi’s shurikenjutsu twisted with something else. Her eyes are a normal dark blue, but colder and more focused than before, and he wonders what she can do without a headache.

“Itachi trained me to defend myself,” she says, relaxing back to what she was, and his surprise must’ve been more transparent than he thought.

He looks down at the shuriken pinched between his fingers for a moment before walking over to give it back. “I think that’s enough for today,” he says, putting a hand on her head. “Let’s get you home.”

Her disappointment is clear, but she doesn’t ask. The walk back is silent, and midway there she closes her eyes.

 

 

Quicker than expected, Sasuke adapts. “I did it,” she says, whirling around to look at her handiwork, kicking up a low cloud of dirt. “I actually did it.”

It’s noon, late May, and sunny as can be, light bearing down on the training grounds like a challenge. Without her Sharingan activated, she just managed to complete her family’s shurikenjutsu. “Yeah, kid,” Kakashi says, eyeing the weapons warily, “you did.”

At ten, Itachi had mastered this technique, but despite his insistence to the contrary, Sasuke was never supposed to have this level of skill. “I’ve never been able to hit a normal target before,” she says, smiling brightly, and for a moment, she looks less like Itachi and more like Obito. There’s something about the Uchiha family destined to break Kakashi’s heart. “Being able to see makes practice so much less tiring.”

Her chakra reserves must not’ve gotten a break in a long time, he thinks, and that’s something he understands, too. “How long can you keep the Sharingan activated?”

With a slight shrug, she answers, “Six hours? If I’m not using it to do anything other than see. If I’m on a mission and have to worry about recording, or creating an illusion, my limit can easily decrease to half that. I didn’t use it if I was in Ame, though. It took enough chakra just to walk around.”

“How long did it take you to learn how to walk on water?”

“It took like a week to learn how to walk up walls,” she says, “and after that I understood the principle, so I could copy my brother. First try.”

Though it’s been years, there are days Kakashi still wonders how Obito would’ve progressed if they’d been able to save him. Looking at Sasuke can be painful, because she hasn’t been around long enough to be herself in her own right yet. “That’s good,” Kakashi says. “Try again. If you keep this up, I’ll talk about getting you instated as a Konoha kunoichi.”

Again, she smiles, more cheerful than he’s seen her give anyone else. “Really?”

“You’re still a Konoha citizen, Sasuke,” he says. “You deserve it.”

He’s not the only jounin thinking of making the suggestion, because her memory might be patchwork, but it’s not safe for the last member of one the village’s founding clans to have confused loyalties. Her instructor was Uchiha Itachi, renowned for being one of the most skilled shinobi since Kakashi himself, and she clearly took to those teachings with little issue. It won’t be difficult for her to improve quickly, and the cursed seal puts her at risk for going to Orochimaru. Having skill like that, and the Mangekyo Sharingan, fall into his hands would mean nothing good for Konoha.

That’s the reasoning for most of the others who regularly check in on her, anyway. For Kakashi, he thinks the girl might be a brat more often than not, but she likes origami and smiles like Obito. She deserves better than to be confined to an apartment with nothing but paper, and the occasional training days when he’s around, to entertain her.

“If I get you,” she says, “promise not to fail me like you do everyone else?”

Surprised, he asks, “How do you know about that?” because he hasn’t talked about his lackluster career as a jounin sensei.

“Anko-san thinks it’s hilarious that you don’t mind me,” Sasuke says, tucking her bangs behind her ear, “so she gossiped about you. Am I really that special?”

He hadn’t even been aware Anko checked up on her. “I have to get some practice in before I inevitably find a few potentials to pass,” he says.

From what she says, in Ame she never had a team. As skilled as she is, she might need a push in the right direction for the answer. “You just don’t want to pass anyone because it takes time away from your reading,” she says, raising an eyebrow and looking older than ten. “I don’t remember the standards for Konoha’s graduation. Do you think I’ll even make it to the test?”

If there’s one thing he’s learned about her personality, it’s that she doesn’t go looking for compliments; this is a real question. “You would,” he says, look around at all the perfectly hit targets. He’s standing in the middle of what could’ve been a slaughter, if these were all chakra signatures instead of trees. “They’re higher and harder than they were when your brother graduated. Most don’t before twelve. But I don’t think you have to worry.”

Maybe this is giving her false hope, but somehow, he doubts it.

 

 

Sasuke gets a team, and Kakashi fails another one. He expects them to still see each other, but less often, so it’s unexpected when she shows up at his door midway through a Tuesday evening, clutching papers in her hand. “I need your help,” she says, eyes low and mouth twisted down.

“All right?” he says, standing aside, unsure what else to do. The old man who lives across the courtyard widens his eyes, and Kakashi tries not to think about how this looks. He hasn’t had anyone other than Gai over since Rin. “How did you know my address?”

“Finding people is my gift in life,” she says as she enters, politely taking off her shoes. “Why do you wear a mask? You look fine.”

When Kakashi opened the door, he thought it would be Gai, who, like most jounin, instinctively walked around with a hidden chakra signature. There hadn’t been a point pulling on more than a shirt to tell him to go away. “It filters the air,” Kakashi says, shutting the door. “My allergies are too bad to be a shinobi otherwise. I was sleeping, Sasuke. What’s wrong?”

The curiosity disappears from her face, and her cheeks redden. “Sorry,” she says, looking down again, and then holds out the papers. “I don’t know how to do this.”

As an orphan without an income, her apartment was paid for, but now that she’s a gennin, she needs to pay rent. The paper she hands him is village issued, written in her landlord’s looping handwriting, and discusses not just rent, but utilities and tax, without calculating it. A second is her paycheck, and the money granted to her until she has steadier missions with higher pay. Math like this is something she should’ve learned a year ago.

Kakashi turns, flicking on the light and fan for the kitchen, and motioning for her to take a seat at the table. After finding a notepad in one of the drawers, he pulls a chair up next to her. “Why didn’t you go to Kaito?” he asks. “Still having trouble?”

Shaking her head, she says, “It’s not that. It’s just. Well, you graduated at _five_ , you have to know what it’s like when people expect you to be good at everything. It’s just less embarrassing telling you I can’t do this.”

“Exactly how much of this can’t you do?”

“I didn’t really have a formal education,” she says, tucking her elbows in, and keeping her gaze to the table. “Itachi wasn’t very good at this, either. My mother used to call math the downfall of the Uchiha clan because she had to do all the taxes.”

The ceiling fan spins lazily above them, too slow to provide relief from the heat. Sasuke’s intelligent, with a quick mind and expansive knowledge of nearly country’s history and culture. Occasionally looking out for her wasn’t meant to include tutoring sessions. “I know the Sharingan gave you good reading comprehension skills,” he says, “but is there anything else you’re behind on?”

Sighing, she says, “Probably. There’re also things I must’ve forgotten. I’m really sorry to just show up like this, Kakashi-san, but I have to turn it in by tomorrow at five.”

First, he does the calculations for her, then turns his attention to a real lesson. The concepts confuse her, and the progress is slow going, but by eight, she knows enough to practice herself. Kushina helped him through the same process in this same kitchen fifteen years ago, sharing lunch with him off chipped plastic plates, and Kakashi wonders what she and Minato would think if they could see him now.

 

 

Last time Kakashi was in the Uchiha compound, the corpses had been collected, but the blood remained. Flies stuck to every dried pool they could find, and it stunk of death left to fester for days. Someone’s cleaned it up since then, and now it might be dirty with cobblestones split open by overgrown weeds, but it no longer looks like the site of a battle.

Sasuke’s not in any of the buildings, but out by the compound lake, feet bare and brushing against the water. There’s a pinwheel in her hand, green and white striped, barely moving in the breeze. “Your team’s worried about you,” he says, taking a seat next to her. “Kaito asked me to find you.”

“I didn’t think anyone look for me here,” she says without looking up, “or that they’d try to get a third party involved. Was Kaito-sensei mad?”

“No,” Kakashi says. “Not showing up to practice was...understandable.”

A short silence passes before the wind picks up, twirling the paper. “I turned eight in the River Country,” she says. “Itachi bought me a pinwheel. I know it’s childish, but I guess it became my thing after that.”

Today she turns twelve, marking her first birthday without family. Kakashi remembers his fifteenth, and how he learned societal sentiments made everything worse that day because nothing cuts quite as deeply as loneliness. “It gets easier, Sasuke,” he says. “It never goes away, but it gets easier.”

“I know what everyone thinks about my brother,” she says, letting the pinwheel drop from her hand and clatter against the wood of the dock, “but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t—I don’t know. Everyone seems under the impression he must’ve been so horrible, but not Itachi. Never Itachi.”

Carefully, to avoid startling her, he puts a hand on her back. She curls up, one knee to her chest and her arm wrapped around it, and he can feel the bones in her spine when he rubs circles between her shoulder blades. “People are complicated,” he says. “No one could argue he didn’t _love_ you, though, or at least not anyone that knew him.”

Sasuke runs her foot across the water, creating ripples, and doesn’t say a word.

 

 

It’s been a year since Sasuke returned to Konoha, and Kakashi will admit to having grown attached. When he hears she might be dead, he thinks of Obito half-crushed beneath the rock, one Sharingan still visible, and is the first to offer to search for the missing Team Ten.

Despite what he expected, they aren’t difficult to find. “Kakashi, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Kurenai says, wiping her hand across her forehead. “They just aren’t going out, but look, they aren’t spreading, either.”

“That’s because it’s a kekkei genkai,” he says, looking for a tree to climb to get over. “I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve read about it. This isn’t going anywhere for days.”

He spies an untouched tree a few paces away with a branch stretching right over the circle of fire. It’s hot, the smoke stifling, and the air acidic. “Do you think anyone’s alive in there?” she says. “Hey, where’re you going?”

“The mask blocks out the smoke,” he answers. “I’ve never seen a Uchiha die from smoke asphyxiation, and Kaito was a fire user, so at least they have a chance.”

“Just, be careful,” she says, but Kakashi’s already up the tree to the edge of branch, above a grey cloud making his eye water.

He lands in the untouched center, and pushes up his forehead protector. With the Sharingan activated, the smoke no longer obscure his vision, and though he can’t see the attackers, he can see all of Team Ten. Kaito and the two boys died by explosives stronger than any tag, and Sasuke has a wound in her abdomen, still bleeding slowly. Her pulse beats brokenly beneath his fingers, and there’s blood running from her left eye. If they’d been even a few hours later, she’d have been too late to save, too.

Getting back up with an unconscious girl in his arms isn’t easy, but it’s manageable, and a minute later he’s back with Kurenai. “The others?” she says, and he shakes his head. “Fuck. We should get to somewhere safer to patch her up.”

“And be fast,” he adds, tailing after her at the quickest pace he feels comfortable going with Sasuke injured. “She’ll be able to confirm when she wakes up, but I think it was Orochimaru. Her injuries are different.”

There’s blood on her hair, turning it stiff, and in her half-dead state, she really is a straw doll. Kakashi knows what it’s like, to lose your family then your team, and he’s learning to hate how many similarities he can see between Sasuke and himself.

 

 

After nearly a year and a half, Sasuke is used to Kakashi’s common tardiness, and her new teammates will need to be, too. He brings her to the memorial stone before their first meeting, something she hasn’t done on her own yet, and sits down with her on the grass.

“I was Team Seven, too, before I became a jounin,” he tells her, struggling to get out words he hasn’t said in a long time. “See the name there, near the top, for the war? Uchiha Obito? He was your second cousin, I think. Our other teammate Rin was kidnapped on a mission in Kusagakure. Obito went after her. I went after him. During the rescue, the Iwa-nin caused a rock fall that pinned half his body. I’d lost my eye earlier that week, and he told Rin to give me his so we could get out of there. She performed the whole surgery in under an hour.”

Sasuke’s quiet for a long moment, tearing a blade of glass to shreds, before saying, “Having your Sharingan stolen is a disgrace. Giving it up...I’ve never heard his name.”

As disappointing as that is, it’s also not surprising. The Uchiha clan hadn’t taken kindly to discovering Obito’s gift. “Rin died a year later on another mission,” Kakashi says, but doesn’t elaborate. “My jounin sensei was the Yondaime. He died during not long after that.”

“You can say during the Kyuubi attack,” she says, starting on a new blade of grass. Green stains underneath her fingernails. “What? You think Itachi didn’t tell me all Konoha’s dirty little secrets? Don’t worry, I won’t mention that I know.”

The sudden increase in his heart rate calms; with everything she’s facing, it wouldn’t be good for Konoha to learn she knows more than she should. “Well,” he says, regaining his composure, “I guess what I’m saying, Sasuke, is that I get it. You have to be careful not to lose your ability to make connections with people. I did for a while, and it puts you in a dark place. Grieve, but don’t shut out the world.”

Again, she’s quiet. Then, “Except for not being there at all, there wasn’t anything I could’ve done for Kaito-sensei or Yuki, but Kichiro took a hit for me. It would’ve just stunned me, but he was close enough for it to kill him.”

Obito died because he threw Kakashi out of the way of a rock. Rin, Minato, and Kushina died for Konoha. “It’s not you fault,” he says, the words tired. “Dying in combat is a risk all shinobi take.”

Sighing, Sasuke says, “Everyone would be a lot better at living if they weren’t so busy trying to save everyone else,” and Kakashi doesn’t have a way to argue against that.

 

 

The original third member of Team Seven was a boy whose parents pulled him after the first meeting when they found out his teammate was Uzumaki Naruto. Kakashi was the one who asked to take on Sasuke, though he told her it was the Sandaime’s decision, and he assumed that as these were her old classmates, she’d fit in. Quickly enough, he learns that isn’t the case.

She refuses to talk about it, which means she must not remember, but it seems like she and Sakura were friends once. The other girl’s angry for not finding out she’s alive until now, and Sasuke’s confused. It’s inevitably that they argue. For Naruto, she’s an obstacle to overcome, and he lashes out for jealousy, not anger. Sasuke, with her easily swayed emotions and current fragility, is doing the opposite of what Kakashi told her, and collapsing into herself from the stress.

While he doesn’t play favorites exactly, he is forced to treat her a little more delicately than the others. Her brother’s mind shattered from stress of his own, and issues like that can be genetic, so it’s not impossible that she could do the same. With her personality, though, any action is more likely to be turned inward than outward. There’s also the matter of Naruto constantly trying to goad her into a fight to prove he’s better. Under normal circumstances Kakashi would let them use each other as motivation to improve themselves, which is a common relationship in the shinobi world, but he can’t with them. Sasuke’s killed opponents a lot more difficult than a couple of gennin fresh from the Academy.

They’re arguing again, the three of them, and though Sasuke’s expression is as blank as it usually is around anyone she isn’t close to, her voice betrays how upset she is. “For the last time,” she says, any hint of the Konoha accent she’s gotten back over the months gone, “I’m not fighting you. Find someone else to help you get some real self-confidence.”

“I don’t care how good you think you are,” Sakura says. On the first day, she dismissed Naruto as easily as Kakashi once dismissed Obito, but since Sasuke joined, their relationship improved immensely. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

“‘I think?’” Sasuke repeats. “Fine. Naruto, Kage Bunshin. Do it. I’ll prove it without fighting.”

Kakashi pauses before turning the next page he’s pretending to read. “Sasuke,” he says, “destroying his clones will count as fighting.”

As of now, she still shies away from physical confrontation, but it won’t last forever. He made the rule official, and hadn’t thought it would come to reminding her of it this soon. “I’m not planning on it,” she says, crossing her arms. “I don’t need a fight to get them to shut up.”

Sighing, he slips his book away, preparing to intervene. Naruto doesn’t delay to talk, as Kakashi thought he would, and Sasuke’s surrounded by a half circle of clones as Sakura gasps. He can’t see Sasuke’s face, but her hands move, and then she has clones of her to the right and left of her.

“See?” she says as Naruto’s jaw drops, and they disappear into a puff of smoke. “Stop bothering me.”

Kakashi steps between them before Naruto can retaliate anyway. “Don’t use your Sharingan like that again, Sasuke,” Kakashi says. “Naruto, Sakura, stop ganging up on your teammate.”

When he puts his hand on her shoulder, the tension eases, but Sakura’s eye are still narrowed. “I’m sorry,” Sasuke says, then looks up. “I promise not to harmlessly copy any more techniques, Kakashi-sensei.”

It wasn’t harmless, though, and he knows because it’s what he would’ve done at her age, had he the means to allow him to. That wasn’t an attempt to stop the fighting by proving herself; it was an attempt to stop it by breaking down Naruto’s pride.

He better figure out how to help her out of this soon, or his team might not survive the consequences.

 

 

“I checked the shrine’s tablet on the Sharingan yesterday,” Sasuke tells him after a short D-ranking mission guarding the village walls. “The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan isn’t supposed to cause fatigue. What’s wrong with me?”

Having the Sharingan doesn’t mean Kakashi knows everything about it; most of its abilities are nameless to him. “I don’t know,” he says. “What’s the difference?”

Looking to the ground, she answers, “The Mangekyo Sharingan happens when you kill someone close to you. An Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan is what happens when you replaces yours with another’s. It cuts out the negative side effects—deteriorating vision, fatigue, I can use more any of Itachi’s techniques, not just mine.”

Of all the parts of her haphazard memory, who transplanted her brother’s eyes into hers is one of the more worrying missing pieces. “It might be because of the cursed seal,” Kakashi says, “or psychosomatic. You didn’t exactly ask for this.”

“Itachi was sick,” she says, playing with the ends of her hair. “It was a hereditary disease. I think he wanted me to have this so I could defend myself, and now I can’t even use it.”

Yesterday, she lied to Sakura and Naruto, and told them her old teammates were promoted without her. Itachi might’ve given Sasuke his eyes to see and defend herself, but Kakashi knows she isn’t talking about self-protection now. If she had control, she could’ve used Amaterasu earlier. She could’ve ended the battle before it started.

This has gone on for too long. What she really needs is the cry, but that doesn’t seem to have happened yet. “You’re not even thirteen,” Kakashi says. “You don’t need to rush.”

Though she doesn’t need to, she wants to, and he doesn’t know how to to teach her to slow down.

 

 

In the aftermath of the fight with Haku and Zabuza, Sasuke finally cries.

“I told you,” she says, tears spilling down her cheeks, and strands hair sticking to her face. “All I do is get people hurt.  I should’ve been able to finish that on my own, but I just froze.”

Having a student as smart as Sasuke can be hard, Kakashi finds. She put together on her own the only way Naruto managed to defeat Haku. “There are side effects of watching some die,” Kakashi tells her. After Rin’s death, he couldn’t complete a mission for a month without having a panic attack. “You would’ve done the same if the situations were reversed, right?” She nods, and wipes away tears that are quickly replaced with more. “This was Naruto’s first experience with combat. It probably would’ve happened anyway.”

“This is the third time I’ve been attacked on a non-combatant mission,” she says, voice breaking. “Kakashi, I don’t know if I could do if I got anyone else—if anyone—”

Her words dissolve into hitches and sobs, and he pulls her into a hug. She falls into him, hands balling up in the fabric of his shirt, and cries herself to exhaustion.

 

 

Without the use of explosive tags, Sasuke’s origami shurikenjusu is still powerful, but has less impact. Teaching her the Chidori is irresponsible, but if Orochimaru comes after her again, then she needs to be able to defend herself.

Though Sasuke’s used at least one skill with every other nature transformation, he’s never see her attempt anything with lightning. It wasn’t her affinity, he reasoned, so learning the Chidori would be difficult, but not impossible. Regardless of how often he’s proven wrong by her, he’s still surprised when she masters his technique on the second try. A quick paper test reveals it is her affinity, making her the only Uchiha he’s ever met without a natural skill towards fire.

She stares, for a moment, at the wrinkled paper before a gust of wind comes by, sweeping it from her fingers and carrying it off. “So _this_ is why I haven’t been able to master anything but fire?” she says. “Itachi couldn’t use lightning.”

Between her family’s proficiency in fire, her affinity to lightning, and the Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu, Sasuke’s now a gennin who can control four nature transformations with minor ability to use the rest because of the Sharingan. Graduation requirements because harder to fulfill because once the war was through, people wanted to see children stay children for longer. Sometimes Kakashi wonders if her brother ever realized what he did to her.

“Affinities usually run in the family,” Kakashi says. Years passed before he learned his father’s was lightning, too. “It probably didn’t occur to him that you weren’t fire. Sasuke, the cursed seal is going to cause an additional limit to your chakra outside of your natural one. You’re only going to be able to use a certain number in a day.”

He watches her cut through dummies of straw, thin arm piercing through and already moving on to the next by the time the one before bursts. At her fourth attempt, she falls sideways to the ground, scraping her elbow and knee, clutching at her shoulder, and he wants quietly with her until the pain subsides. The air is sharp, smells of ozone and storm, burnt straw with the metallic edge of lightning. All the real birds are silent, and with the Chidori faded, the only sound is Sasuke’s pained breathing.

 

 

For Sasuke’s safety, as well as other Konoha shinobi, there was never any official news spread that the last Uchiha had come home. Signing her on for the chuunin exams is dangerous, but not enough so to keep her from participating. “Keep your hair down,” Kakashi tells her after walking his team to the Academy for the written exam, “and don’t make eye contact with anyone. Sakura, Naruto, avoid saying her name as much as possible. “

Sasuke pulls at the elastic, shaking out her hair. “I’ll keep the Sharingan to a minimum,” she says. “Are the glasses really necessary? You said there aren’t any Ame-nin, and my eyes are a different color.”

“They’re a precaution,” he says, interrupting Sakura right as mouth begins to form her question. “The examiners are keeping an eye out for trouble, but stay on your guard, got it?”

“If I’m this much of a problem, why am I even allowed?”

“Because it’s a right every Konoha-nin has,” he answers. “Now get out of here.”

After a stream of goodbyes, the three of them leave, and Sasuke sends him one last, small smile before the door closes behind them.

 

 

A week later, Kakashi joins with his team again for the preliminary rounds. Sakura’s hair is newly cut, chopped to her shoulders and still held back by her forehead protector, and Naruto’s buzzing with his usual energy. Despite his rare timely arrival, Kakashi doesn’t have the chance to speak with Sasuke, because her name’s on the board first. Her opponent is Hyuuga Neji.

Kakashi doesn’t pay much attention to his student’s appearance most days, but it’s unavoidable now. Though tall for her age, she’s little compared to Neji, skinny with narrow features, and once she ties her hair back in a bun, she might not look like a straw doll, but still a doll all the same. On the outside, the match already seems decided. Her teammates know different, but his are smirking. As strong as the Byakugan is, though, the Sharingan is stronger.

When the match begins, Sasuke attacks first, using a Kanton large enough that Neji resorts to the Hyuuga clan’s Hakkeshou Kaiten. “Isn’t that a waste of chakra?” Gai says, leaning his elbows on the rail next to Kakashi, the fabric of his suit squeaking.

“She’s fine,” he answers, and watches his student dart around the auditorium before Neji can go on the offensive, using real weapons for her shurikenjutsu, forcing him into the Hakkeshou Kaiten three times in succession.

Closing down the chakra coils might be a kekkei genkai, but the actual taijutsu style isn’t, and Sasuke’s speed’s superior. Kakashi draws his eyes away from the fight for a moment when he notices the uncomfortable tremor throughout the jounin in the room; as he thought before, watching Sasuke’s taijutsu is like watching the ghost of her brother.

But then the illusion fades when she creates her origami shuriken, spreading them around him before drawing in. The victorious smiles Neji’s teammates have when he sweeps them away fade as they realize the same thing that Kakashi does. If there’s one thing Sasuke understands, it’s blind spots, and those earlier metal weapons weren’t to tire Neji, but to analyze him. The second wave of paper shuriken comes in a row from behind, just out of sight, and she feints an attack head on to keep him in place. They connect, hitting him in the back, and every Konoha-nin gasps.

For a moment, Kakashi thinks the battle is won, but while Neji’s shocked and injured, Sasuke wasn’t aiming to harm him enough to immobilize him. Though he’s unable to complete a full gentle fist, he still intercepts her distraction attack enough to tap one of the chakra points on her arm. The cursed seal reacts, black lines bursting from her neck, automatically causing her Sharingan to change to the Mangekyo. Kakashi makes a jolted movement like the rest of the jounin to and stop the match, but the lines abruptly recede before anyone has the chance. She controlled it on her own, he realizes, and is hit by a sudden rush of pride.

Though the cursed seal’s confined again, her new eyes remain, and the jounin back down. Neji runs at her side, leaving drops of blood behind him, but even the Byakugan isn’t a good enough defense against the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan.

He ends up on his back, twitching with his Byakugan deactivated. Kakashi jumps down with Gai as Sasuke’s proclaimed the winner. “What did you do to him?” he asks as the medical-nin take Neji away, and Kakashi pulls her away from them, inspecting her eye himself.

“I was just genjutsu,” she answers, shooing Kakashi’s hand away. “If I could survive it at seven, he can survive it now.”

Whatever genjutsu she created to render Hyuuga Neji into that state must’ve been strong. For both their sakes, Kakashi just hopes she’s right.

 

 

The month before Sasuke’s match with Gaara becomes a training exercise for both of them. For the first time in years, Kakashi tells someone about Rin, because in truth, he has a Mangekyo Sharingan he’s never accessed, too.

Bringing Sasuke outside the walls, even to train, would never be allowed, so they practice in the Uchiha compound. It’s still crowded with imagined ghosts, and though telling the story to a girl of twelve’s uncomfortable, he thinks it’s fitting that Rin’s revived a while here. “I think I get it,” Sasuke says, passing him a bottle of water. “Wanting to go out on your own terms, I mean. But death doesn’t really happen to the person who died, right? It happens to everyone else.”

“People make rash decisions when trapped,” Kakashi says. “For people like us, death is one of the first ideas.”

A shinobi’s career is built on corpses and lies, and a currency of exhaustion and blood. His father committed suicide in the face of shame, and shamed himself further. Kakashi doesn’t understand why making someone else stop your heart is considered the honorable way to die. For a shinobi, death of others is life, and death of yourself is retirement. He and Rin were supposed to go on their first date when they returned from that mission. Instead he walked back into Konoha’s barrier with blood on hands, and seeing Sasuke that day in the woods was seeing a mirror image of himself. After, she became Itachi and Obito, and now she’s just herself.

The wind picks up, blowing her hair across the lower half of her face. “There’s a belief in the Frost Country,” Sasuke say, moving it away, “that a person can only reach Tengoku no Kyuusoku at the top of Mugen no Yama if they’ve spilt blood against their will—not for money, or in a fit of anger. It’s the entrance to their spirit world. The higher you climb, the heavier the guilt is on your back, but if you can make it all the way up and walk with the spirits, then you unlock a new way to see. Sounds like the Mangekyo Sharingan, right?”

“Yeah, it does.” It’s a good lesson, too. Bear the burden of your hurt and guilt without shame, and you’ll learn from it. “Where’d you learn it?”

“A festival,” she says. “It was for the winter solstice, when the barrier between the spirit world and this one are thinnest or whatever. My jacket was white, not warm enough at all, so my lips were blue from the cold, and my eyes red because I wanted to see, so this little girl called me Yuki-onna. Her mother was so embarrassed she made it her mission to tell us absolutely everything about what the festival was celebrating. Or warding off.”

Though Kakashi didn’t know the story of Tengoku no Kyuusoku, he does know the one of Yuki-onna. Sasuke’s too young to fit the part. “Well,” he says, “I guess this means we’re partners if Konoha ever needs to send shinobi to the spirit world. Think you’re ready for another try with controlling Amaterasu?”

As she smiles, the Mangekyo Sharingan bleeds back into her irises. He’s bore his grief and his guilt for a long time, and learned to overcome it. Now it’s time she learns to, too.

 

 

Kakashi has Sasuke back for half an hour before a couple of ANBU come and take her away. “Where’re they taking her?” Sakura asks, placing a hand over Naruto’s mouth before he can demand they bring his teammate back. “Kakashi-sensei, is Sasuke in trouble?”

There’s a numbness of disbelief settled of Kakashi’s mind, but he pulls himself out of it, and answers, “That depends. What did she do?”

The fight with Gaara of Suna and Sasuke ended in Konoha’s applause, her Chidori powerful enough she nearly killed him through his sand, and somehow that victory derailed into this. Now the Hokage is dead by Orochimaru’s hand, and Konoha just faced its second Tailed-Beast attack in thirteen years.

“She did a lot of damage,” Naruto says once Sakura moves her hand. “Like, there was fire and lightning everywhere and Gaara’s sister was freaking out because she couldn’t do anything or whatever. Then she goes ‘It’s your turn,” and Gaara went from being the Shukaku back to normal. Sasuke like caught Sakura and then she was out. Gaara said she was inside his head?”

When Sasuke said Itachi told her about the Kyuubi attack, Kakashi should’ve known he included the information on the Sharingan’s alleged involvement. He closes his eyes, breathes in deep, and opens them again. Both his students are staring up at him, eyes soft with worry. “You didn’t mentioned to anyone, did you?” he asks.

“Uh, no,” Naruto says, “but the jounin who found us probably heard me trying to ask Sasuke what she did. She was sort of awake by then. What _did_ she do?”

Something cracks and crushes in the distance, out of sight. “People aren’t going to think she had anything to do with this, are they?” Sakura says, bottom lip catching between her teeth.

With Orochimaru gone, Suna already apologizing and swearing to pay reparations, absolving them of potential war, Konoha’s going to look for someone to blame. Even though Sasuke’s the last of one of the founding clans, showing that level of control at her age’ll raise unwanted questions. “I don’t know,” Kakashi says. “Sasuke’s...complicated. Naruto, Gaara had two separate chakra reserves, one of his own, and one that belonged to what you saw him turn into. She used her eyes to close that secondary chakra reserve.”

As Sakura doesn’t know about Naruto’s status as the Konoha Jinchuruki, Kakashi can only be so specific. His student’s face pales, though, and he knows what Kakashi means. “Someone can do that?” Naruto says, glancing down at his stomach. “How? Why?”

“Is it because of her brother?” Sakura says. “I was in her class. I haven’t asked, but I know he’s the reason she was gone, and that he was ridiculously good.”

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Kakashi says, avoiding the question, because Sasuke would disagree with his answer. “Go home. Get some some sleep. It’s been a long day for all of us.”

In perfect viewing distance is the roof the Hokage monument, the Sandaime’s face cracked down the middle, and Kakashi doesn’t understand how the village that boasts about having the Will of Fire managed to be brought so easily to near defeat.

 

 

For months now, Kakashi’s denied the possibility that special circumstances caused him to develop a certain degree of favoritism towards Sasuke. When she falls asleep in the I&T lobby after seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation interrogation, he doesn’t hesitate in carrying her to her apartment without trying to wake her.

The place is spotless save a few paper flowers and a pinwheel in a cup, but her bedroom has paper cranes hanging from the ceiling. They flutter on their strings in the breeze when he cracks opens in the window, almost sounding like real birds flapping their wings. As dirty as she is, she’s not family, and the best he does is tug off her shoes before slipping her under the covers. She rolls over on her own, pulling the blanket those last few inches to her chin, and says, half-asleep, “Thanks, nii-san.”

Kakashi pauses where he stands.

Objectively, he knows she’s still just a child. More than once, he’s thought of her as defined by her age, but he hasn’t thought of her as young in a long time. With the way she speaks and carries herself, it’s an easy thing to forget.

Don’t worry, Itachi, Kakashi thinks for the first time. Your little sister is safe with me.

 

 

It takes an attempt on both Kakashi’s and Naruto’s lives, and an incapacitating abdominal injury for Kakashi to break his private promise. Uchiha Sasuke, chuunin for two days, was taken from her hospital bed in the dead of night. There’s enough blood and charred walls to prove she put up a struggle, but the physical strain was too much for her; the medical-nin who came running to her aid were killed near her bedside, and there’s a trail of blood to the window. According to the report of the one medical-nin who survived, the attackers were Oto-nin, and she’d screamed when one stabbed a syringe into her arm.

The rescue team consists of Kakashi, Anko, Kurenai, Asuma, and after enough begging, Naruto, but they come back with just the corpses of the Oto-nin. There’s an overturned circular coffin, too, and more blood trailing away from it, but Sasuke’s gone. “Whatever happened to get her away,” Asuma says, snubbing out his cigarette against the stucco wall of the hospital. “That wasn’t something she was going for, either. Those black flames were goddamn everywhere.”

“There was so much blood,” Naruto says, voice unusually small. “How is she still alive?”

“You better hope whoever got her had some form medical knowledge,” Kurenai says, crumbling onto a bench with her head in her hands. The air smells ill and sterile at the same time. “Someone’s willing to pay money for her. It could’ve been anyone.”

Asuma murmurs something about Sasuke being a strong girl, but it’s more for Naruto’s comfort than anything else. Like Anko, Kakashi says nothing, though he should. His other students need him to stay steady, but Sasuke’s not strong. She’s made of thin wood painted with oyster power, not fabric and straw, fragile instead of durable. If by some chance whoever took her has medical knowledge, then she’ll live, but she’ll end up with Ame once again, and any progress they made with the captive-bonding will reverse.

Though the “nii-san” was for Itachi, it felt like it was a little for Kakashi, too, and he isn’t ready to face her on opposite sides of a battle.

 

 

Six months pass before Sasuke’s name enters the Bingo Book without the title of missing-nin, but jounin of Ame, and affiliation with the Akatsuki. By the time Kakashi encounters her, it’s a year after that, and her price is almost what Itachi’s once was.

It’s one of those solo assassination missions Kakashi wasn’t supposed to deal with now that he’s out of the ANBU, and coincidentally not far from Shimogakure. The Spirit Festival is in full swing, brightly colored with games and food scented like sugar and summer sunshine. In the distances rages the storm of Tengekyo no Kyuusoku on top of Mugen no Yama. All he’s doing is wasting time until the plan’ll be set into motion when he hears the sound of a laugh not easily forgotten.

Sasuke’s with a blonde boy not much older than her, laughing harder than she ever had in Konoha, wearing a white traditional kimono with a sloping back and pale blue obi, her hair pulled into a bun with a pinwheel stabbed through. The boy’s closer than she normally allows with his hand on her lower back as they share some kind a piece of cotton cheese cake. There’s a flee on sight warning for a chuunin or gennin, a kill on sight order for jounin in regards to the Harbinger of the Akatsuki. Kakashi should be figuring out a way to draw her somewhere private, and take her to die alone.

Instead, all he can think is that she looks an awful lot like Yuki-onna with her feet hidden by the bottom of the kimono, and how it must’ve been a purposeful decision. She also looks happy, unbothered by the snow coming up in swirling drifts around her. Because of her kimono and the boy’s yukata, as well as their obvious familiarity, Kakashi might mistake them for just some civilian teenagers in love, if he didn’t know better.

He’s trained to read lips, and can see from his angle when Sasuke says, “I want to see ice sculptures,” as she joins elbows with the boy. There’s no suspicion on his face, just exasperation, when he agrees, and allows her to lead the way.

What she’s doing is changing the direction they’re heading in, Kakashi realizes. It’s away from wherever they were going originally, and more importantly, away from him.

As he turns to leave, too, he tells himself he’s only returning the favor for now.

 

 

The second time they meet is on the outskirts of Takigakure, and she’s knee deep in water, wearing nothing but her shorts and a wrap. Though only fourteen, she looks older, black hair spilling like rain down her back. She hasn’t grown an inch, but the way she stands is an optical illusion to make it seem as though she has.

“Hey, Kakashi,” she says, voice so casual she might be standing at his doorstep asking for help with her taxes. “Did Konoha send you here to kill me yet?”

When she steps out of the water, she presents her back to him as a promise or taunt, and pulls her shirt off a branch. “No,” he says as she ties it on. The cursed seal is gone, and there’s not a scar on her body. “But I still should.”

She takes her cloak, too, zipping that up, covered now in black with red clouds. There’s an Ame forehead protector wrapped around her head without a scratch through the middle. “You aren’t going to, though,” she says, turning to face him, grabbing a chokuto off the ground. Her eyes are colder than they were before. “I’m not going to kill you. How’s Sakura? I hear she’s a medical-nin.”

As Sakura’s still just an apprentice, and a gennin at that, Sasuke shouldn’t have that information. “We’re good,” he says, folding his arms. “What happened to you, Sasuke? Did you want to leave the whole time?”

“I still love Konoha. That’s not a lie,” she says, “but I got my memories back. I owe everything to the Akatsuki, and I can’t be loyal to both.”

Jiraiya’s intelligence says Amegakure is governed by the ruler of the Akatsuki. Kakashi put together himself ages ago who Itachi really went to, the real reason Sasuke’s so skilled. It just took seeing her laugh in that swirling snow to admit it to himself. “If you come back now,” he says, “you’ll be able to get a pardon. Konoha’s your home, Sasuke. It’s more yours than most of its residents.”

An expression passes over her face that’s sad, and maybe even a little scared. “I can’t,” she says. “I don’t have a home. You don’t have the Yondaime to save you anymore, Kakashi. Konoha’s made itself perfectly clear it doesn’t want someone in its walls who can raze it to the ground.”

There’s a saying about the Akatsuki, that all it would take is one member alone to destroy a village. Just because Sasuke has an affiliation with them doesn’t mean Kakashi ever imagined she can do the same. “Tsunade was against the interrogation when she heard,” he says. “You know that. You wouldn’t have made chuunin otherwise.”

“And now I’m a jounin,” she says. “That’s the thing about betrayal. Someone’s always rewarded at the expense of someone else’s happiness and trust. Konoha shouldn’t antagonize the Akatsuki, but if they’re going to, do it for Naruto. I’m not worth enough to start a war over.”

She falls apart into a flurry of paper cranes, disappearing with a technique she didn’t have two years ago, and Kakashi’s left alone on the bank of the river.

 

 

Team Seven’s on a mission to gather intel on Orochimaru, and there’s a kunai to Kakashi’s jugular before he registers someone’s behind him. “Take them and leave, Kakashi,” Sasuke says. “All you’re going to do is make a mess of this.”

“You’ve improved, Sasuke,” he says, keeping himself relaxed. “It’s not an easy thing, sneaking up on me.”

From this angle, he can’t see her, but she’s pressed close enough that he can feel her; she’s just as small as six months ago, and though she was thin already, she feels thinner. The kunai against his neck trembles. “Yeah, and it’s even harder doing it to me,” she says. “The three of you can come out now.”

As her old teammates and Sai emerge from behind the rocks, the kunai’s removed, and Sasuke steps away. Unlike Kakashi, this is the first time they’ve seen each other in two and a half years, and Naruto and Sakura’s eyes are soft with hope.

Thinner was an understatement, Kakashi finds. There’s an exhaustion set so deep into Sasuke it’s bruising beneath her eyes, and the shake in her hand is slight, but present. Both are visible, her hair too windblown, but her left is shut. Last time they saw each other, he thought he imagined the fear, but Sasuke’s perfectionist nature would never allow her to deteriorate to this. With the Akatsuki cloak dwarfing her body, she looks too much like that little girl who walked back into Konoha borders, and knocked a hole into his life.

Then Sakura says, “Sasuke,” and is interrupted by a kunai flying past her face, burying itself into the tree behind her. “Hey!”

“Orochimaru’s dead,” Sasuke says, taking a step backwards. “You can find his corpse in the valley. Any business you had here is finished, so you should leave.”

“No,” Naruto says, not seeing what Kakashi does. If Sasuke didn’t want to return, that kunai would’ve connected to Sakura’s eye, tremor in her hand or not. “We’re not leaving here without you. You can still come back to Konoha.”

He moves when he sees the tremor worsen to a real shake, and manages to catch her before she can collapse to the ground. “Whatever you’re scared of, Sasuke,” he says, quiet enough his two students won’t hear, “we can protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t before.”

When her fingers bunch at the fabric of his sleeve, a rush of relief runs through him at the realization that she’s still conscious. She’s too thin, her skin too cold, the exhaustion too prominent beneath the darkness in her eyes. “It’s not your fault,” she says, a bad mirror image of months telling her the same thing, “but it’s a little late for that.”

Sakura and Naruto drop to the opposite side of her. “It’s chakra depletion,” Sakura says, running a glowing hand down the length of Sasuke’s body. “What did you do to yourself?”

Sasuke, with her one-eyed stare focused solely on Kakashi, says, “I’m sorry,” and disappears with something more elegant than a Shunshin.

 

 

Kakashi dies during the attack on Konoha, but somehow is pulled back to life. By the time he’s declared healthy and allowed to go where he pleases, Sasuke’s already in the hospital, unconscious.

“She just walked right in not long before Naruto showed,” Tsunade says when he comes to see his old student. “There was an argument. It looked like she was winning for a moment. Then a man in a mask showed up at the same time as Naruto, she did...something, and hasn’t been awake since. Naruto’s last message from Pein and the girl with him was to take care of Sasuke.”

In the hospital bed, with the white scratchy blankets pulled to her shoulders, Sasuke seems smaller than ever. “Is there something wrong with her left eye?” he asks, settling himself into the chair at her side.

There’s a pause before Tsunade answers, “It’s not that there’s something wrong, exactly. She has the Rinnegan, like Pein. This is severe chakra exhaustion. My guess is that she can’t use it all that often because she doesn’t have the chakra reserves necessary, but she over-exerted herself. The cursed seal’s gone, too.”

She slips her fingers into the collar of the hospital shirt, adjusting it so Kakashi can see. He’s known this for over a year. “What’s going to happen with her?”

“Rehabilitation for captive-bonding,” she says, crossing her arms. Sasuke twists suddenly in her sleep, curling up on her side. “She never had help initially, and suffered through genjutsu trauma at least three times, possibly more. Technically she never did anything to go against Konoha. Her leaving was kidnapping, she took out the missing-nin who killed the Sandaime. She’ll have to face the consequences of defection, but depending on what she says, she might even be able to get reinstated as a Konoha kunoichi.”

Even though that’s true, not many people’ll be pleased about a decision that lets someone with ties to the Akatsuki get away with very little punishment. How long it’ll last is debatable, though, he thinks. Sasuke’s too good at earning someone’s affections.

“Her physical condition’s still unstable,” Tsunade continues. “She’ll wake, but it might take a while. Sakura going to come see what she can do when she’s done with the rest of her patients. I need to leave, but if something goes wrong, go grab the nearest medical-nin.”

After Kakashi agrees, she leaves, and he’s alone with Sasuke. The shirt’s slipping off her bare shoulder, her hair spread out across the pillow, and there’s not a mark on her. Her chest moves unsteadily, struggling to breathe, and Kakashi waits in silence.

**Author's Note:**

> So! This establishes the timeline. There's also everything after of course, but I didn't want to write it because the story is long enough already and also in case anyone wants ships.
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> Okay! So, I linked my tumblr, but I'm dyslexic, and should never be allowed to type in anything by hand, which means I made a typo and fuck if I know what happened. I know this isn't a proper hyperlink, so it'll take copy and pasting, but that was awkward, so here:
> 
> feathersandfoxes.tumblr.com


End file.
